1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing system, and more particularly to an image processing system for producing user-desired composite photographs from pictures such as printed photographs by his or her manipulating the system installed at a storefront.
2. Description of the Background Art
Recently, a photographic system, which takes portraits and produces original composite photographs by adding to their background novel or brilliant designs, enlivens an amusement arcade. The photo-graphic system includes, for example, in a box-like housing an image pickup device such as an electronic camera for taking portraits in a fixed focus, a combining processor for combining through digital processing the picked-up images with background images prepared in advance, and a printer for printing combined images, and produces composite photographs of a subject through the user operation like coin insertion. It usually takes only certain photographs from a fixed angle of view, such as upper half portraits.
On the other hand, it is known that a photo-finishing laboratory, a so-called photo lab offers a service which creates original documents by printing on postcards or calendars pictures obtained from negatives taken by a user. The service can further enhance its originality because it can select expressive portraits in various conditions or environments, or favorite pictures of the user.
The latter case, however, takes a greater time and labor than the photographic system because it is necessary for users to make a request to a specialty store. In view of this, the inventor or the assignee of the present invention plans to propose an image processing system or photomontage system which can be easily operated by a user like a copy machine, and generate in a short time original pictures the user desires by selecting images from printed photographs or the like on which desired images are printed.
In particular, when reading images from printed photographs with such a system, it must be taken into account that there are various service sizes in printed photographs such as economy (EC) size, L size, high-definition television (HV) size, king (KG) size and 2L size. Without considering this, user-desired pictures may not be obtained.
Conventionally, such apparatuses that detect sizes of the processed document are disclosed, for example, in Japanese patent laid-open publication Nos. 92318/1979 and 578/1989, which are applied to copy machines or the like. The former publication discloses an apparatus that comprises a size sensor like a photodetector, and carries out processing such as scaling or magnifying/reducing after detecting the size of a document placed on a scanner while moving the size sensor which is mounted on a paper depressor of a copy machine slidably in the longitudinal and lateral directions for detecting edges of the document.
The latter publication discloses a system that carries out processing by sensing a pattern like a bar code which is put on a document in advance to indicate a control mode such as a copy size, scaling size or factor, and the number of copies.
The conventional techniques, however, have some problems. First, the former apparatus requires a mechanism for detecting or determining the document size and a controller for controlling it, which presents a problem of complicating the apparatus and increasing its cost.
The latter apparatus has a problem of imposing a burden on users because they must put the bar code or the like on the document in advance. In particular, a problem can arise from the facts that common users are rather unconscious of the document size like the above-mentioned service sizes of printed photographs, or that even if they know it, they cannot distinguish small size differences on the spot.